1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a color printing apparatus and a color print data analyzing method, and more particularly to a color printing apparatus and a color print data analyzing method for executing a command analyzing process with respect to color print data received from a host device to generate page data for each color component and performing printing by superimposing images for respective color components for printing based on the generated page data.
2. Description of the Related Art
As disclosed in, for example, Japanese patent laid-open publication No. Hei6-139033, in this kind of conventional color printing apparatus, a definition for converting a color description into a monochrome description having only a monochrome value for each elementary color is added in a definition addition section of a page description language program including color descriptions according to a predetermined color specifying system using predetermined multiple elementary colors, the page description language program having this definition added thereto is analyzed by a monochrome color interpreter to be developed to monochrome image data, and the monochrome image data is further synthesized and outputted as color output data.
In the conventional color printing apparatus, however, all the data must be first generated for, e.g., cyan, which is sequentially followed by generation of all the data for magenta, yellow and black. The data must be, therefore, held in a receiving memory until generation of the color image data is completed, resulting in a problem of improvement in efficient use of the memory. Further, the color description in the program must be retrieved in the definition addition section to generate a program converted into the monochrome description before analyzing the page description language program for each of multiple elementary colors by the monochrome interpreter, and the high-speed color printing is hence difficult.